Islam and Human Rights

The Economist

He may think it is all part of confronting Iran; or he may want to support the liberalising reforms of the Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman; or he may hope to profit by selling the Saudis “lots of beautiful military equipment”. Whatever the case, he is damaging America’s interests. Precisely because of the importance of Saudi Arabia—the world’s biggest oil exporter and home to Islam’s two holiest places—the West should urge restraint on the impetuous prince and help disentangle him from an unwinnable war....

Aakar Patel

Aakar Patel

As an Indian and as a student of history, I was disappointed by what I saw in Turkey. We have close cultural ties with the Turkic people, from before the time when Turks actually came to Turkey about 1,000 years ago. Most of the Islamic rulers of India were actually Turkish. Mahmud Ghazni was of Turkish origin, Babur was a Chagatai Turk and Tipu of Mysore called himself “Sultan” because he also claimed Turkish ancestry. ...

David Bergman and Tasneem Khalil

David Bergman

Human Rights Watch has confirmed that the bodies of 21 of the over 90 people secretly detained in 2016 were subsequently found dead with at least nine other men remaining missing. Most people the Bangladeshi authorities illegally and secretly detain are opposition activists, or alleged militants – however, state law enforcement agencies do also at times pick up people who are perceived by the government as causing it difficulty or embarrassment or otherwise useful to it...

Nada Homsi

Nada Homsi

The Human
Rights Watch report demonstrates that Afghan fighters younger than 18 have died
in Syria, and it sheds new light on the recruitment of Afghan Shiites to fight
in Syria, where Iran backs the Syrian government in a multisided war. Iran is
home to many Afghans, who have travelled there to work or as refugees fleeing
conflict in their country. Human rights groups have long expressed concern that
vulnerable Afghan refugees are being pressured by the Iranian authorities to
fight in Syria....

Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi

The scene was
quite dramatic as masked security men stormed houses with cameras, filming
everything and confiscating papers, books and computers. The arrested are
accused of being recipients of Qatari money and part of a grand Qatari-backed
conspiracy. It anguishes me to speak with other Saudi friends in Istanbul and
London who are also in self-exile. There are at least seven of us — are we
going to be the core of a Saudi diaspora?...

Bryant Harris

Bryant Harris

“One thing
that’s hardest for me to wrap my mind around, and I think least credible, is
the idea that Iranian weapons are coming in commercial grain shipments or on
container ships,” he said. “That’s just not how it’s going to get done.”....

Tyler Stapleton

Hamas,
Hezbollah, the Islamic State, and other terrorist groups have a demonstrated
propensity to use human shields to protect the infrastructure they use to stage
attacks. They direct men, women, and children to place themselves on roofs and
next to rocket launch sites to deter retaliatory measures. The use of civilians
to protect military targets is a flagrant violation of international law and a
war crime.....

Shabnam Madadzadeh

Shabnam Madadzadeh

While in prison, the regime's agents harassed and tortured my brother
in front of my eyes. They used to beat him, saying "no one knows about you
outside of these walls." The loudmouth agents would add while still
beating him: "No one is paying attention to what is happening to you here,
and everyone will forget about you because you don't matter. Those words still
echo in my brain: "No one knows about you outside of these
walls..."..

Imam Michael Saahir

The majority of African-American Muslims, while still honouring the
great achievements of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, have embraced the universal
teaching of Islam that accepts all races as natural creations of Allah.
Collectively the very presence of African-American Muslims — individuals who
very often change their family names and observe different holidays, among
other changes —serves as a catalyst for moving civil rights in America
forward....

Robert J. Burrowes, New Age Islam

Robert J. Burrowes, New Age Islam

Burmese scholar and activist, Dr Maung Zarni has been indefatigable in
his efforts to raise awareness of the Burmese government's genocidal assault on
the Rohingya Muslim population in Burma. He has also not shied away from
drawing attention to democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's complicity in this genocidal
assault....

Shamil Shams and Arafatul Islam

Pakistan is already one of the most dangerous countries for
journalists, but the blasphemy issue has made it even more dangerous for them.
Blasphemy is a sensitive topic in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where
around 97 percent of its 180 million inhabitants are Muslim. Rights advocates
have long been demanding a reform of the controversial blasphemy laws, which
were introduced by the Islamic military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq in the
1980s. ....

Amnesty International Press Release

The Bangladeshi government has not only failed to protect dissenting
voices or hold accountable the armed groups that threaten them, it has also
stifled freedom of expression through a slew of repressive tactics and new
laws…

Alex Forsyth

Alex Forsyth

He used to work as a security guard in a pub but then he met a group
which trades in organs. His job is to find people desperate enough to give up
parts of their body for money, and the influx of refugees from Syria to Lebanon
has created many opportunities. "I do exploit people," ....

The Economist

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by Western nations, which sides with the president, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, is finalising plans to invade and take the port. An attack is imminent, say UN observers. A successful raid could push rebel forces—a combination of Shia revivalists, Houthis and soldiers loyal to the former president....

Mustafa Akyol

Mustafa Akyol

This is not to
say that Muslims who ask for freedom in the West must be held accountable for
the lack of freedom in “Islamic” states. But it does mean that Muslim opinion
leaders — imams, scholars, intellectuals — should give serious thought to a key
question: Is liberalism a good or bad thing for Muslims? Should they embrace
freedom or not?...

Timothy Garton Ash

Timothy Garton Ash

If this
newspaper were published in Turkey the rest of this column might be entirely
blank, except for an author photograph at the top and the words, printed in
large type, “124 days deprived of freedom”. That’s what the country’s most
important surviving oppositional newspaper, Cumhuriyet, regularly prints for
its imprisoned columnists – with the tally of days in jail ticking up and up.
One leading columnist, Kadri Gürsel, recently sent a moving letter that begins:
“I salute you all with love from B block, ward number 25 of Silivri prison
number 9.”...

Memorandum

Exiled POK Leader Shaukat Kashmiri

We call upon
the United Nations Human Rights Council to note that many voices of opposition
raised against the Pakistani Government’s deliberate policy to keep the people
of Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan subjugated have been silenced permanently. The brutal killing of Sardar Arif Shahid,
Chairman of the All Parties National Alliance and a very prominent Kashmiri political
leader, in Rawalpindi on May 13, 2013 by the Pakistani intelligence services is
a clear reflection of the reprehensible policy adopted by the Government
agencies to remove sane voices of peaceful resistance....

Ibrahim Halawa

Ibrahim Halawa

Each time you
are transferred to a new prison, there is something called “the party”. They
show you who’s boss. In most cases it’s beatings, but in one, we were stripped,
told to lie down facing the ground with our arms behind our back, and they
started to jump on our backs, from one prisoner to the next. It’s normal to be
cursed, stripped naked, beaten with a bar, or put in solitary confinement or
the “tank” (a pitch-black 3.5m x 5.5m cell). They might also torture another
prisoner in front of you. Of course you never forget. Ever....

Nathan Hersh

Nathan Hersh

But capital
punishment for Palestinian assailants will not help fight terrorism, nor will
it solve any aspect of the conflict. It will not deter future attacks, as the
promoters of the legislation had claimed. It is a thoughtless, vengeful
reaction to a problem many Israelis increasingly believe is unsolvable. ...

Champa Patel

Champa Patel

There are
immediate steps Bangladesh can, and must, take to improve the situation.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the country now fear they could become
the next target for violent groups. These include free thinkers like Niloy
Neel, members of Bangladesh's beleaguered LGBTI community, or minority
religious groups like the Hindus. ....

Thomas Erdbrink

Faezeh Hashemi

Some people, even among the clergy, have risen to her defence. “They met
in prison, of course they can be friends,” said Fazel Meybodi, a reformist
cleric from the Shiite holy city of Qum. Noting that not all Islamic scholars
agree that the Bahais are spiritually impure, he added: “These are just two
humans meeting. What is the problem?”...

Parliament of the World's Religions

Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, who was one of the lawyers for the
seven, stated that there was no evidence to sustain any of the charges against
them. Nonetheless, each of them was sentenced to twenty years in prison – the
longest sentences of any prisoner of conscience in Iran today...

Aysha Khan

He pointed to ... Iran’s majority-Shiite regime,
where Sunnis, Christians and Baha’is have been persecuted, imprisoned and even
sentenced to death on dubious unrelated charges. And in Pakistan more people
are on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy charges than in any
other nation in the world....

Ben Talib

With the inmate kneeling at his feet, head facing the floor, the soldier
grabbed a sharp weapon and started hacking at the base of his skull, severing
the spinal cord from the head. Then he ordered another patient to drag the body
to the bathroom. The U.N. report says of Hospital 601, “Many patients have been
tortured to death in this facility.” The soldier called himself Azrael, after
the archangel of death; other survivors recall him murdering patients in
similarly horrifying ways.....